Apple's new music-related social network, Ping, is not tied in to Facebook because the website demanded "onerous terms" that Steve Jobs said his company could not agree to.

Jobs spoke with Kara Swisher of BoomTown after Wednesday's event, and revealed that Apple talked to Facebook about potential partnerships related to Ping. While the discussions did not result in a deal, there is plenty of evidence that Facebook connectivity was likely a part of Ping until it was pulled before launch.

Jobs said the terms demanded by Facebook were ones that his company could not sign off on. However, some have spotted evidence of Facebook Connect compatibility within Ping, leading Cult of Mac to conclude that "Facebook's terms only became onerous at the last minute."

Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing at Apple, even said in an interview Wednesday that Ping would allow users to use Facebook to find their friends.

Executives at Facebook also anonymously shared with Swisher their frustration that Ping's layout and blue color scheme resembles Facebook. However, the social networking site's official statement made no such comments.

"Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we've partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision," the company said. "Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future."

Despite the supposed fallout with Facebook, Jobs is reportedly very excited about Ping, and said he believes it could become the most significant product announced during Wednesday's keynote. Other products introduced included the new Apple TV and an all-new iPod lineup.

Peter Kafka of MediaMemo, who correctly reported that the new iTunes would be "social, not streaming," speculated that Apple could create an open API for Ping. That strategy would allow Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites to integrate into the new music-centric service from Apple.

So Steve Jobs steers facebook now? Wow, this guy has a lot of power. Or does he?

Typical Apple lately. Instead of using the Skype or AIM to get facetime going, we have to use Apple's proprietary format which works on nothing but other iPhone 4's on Wi Fi so it's useless right now.

We had to use Quicktime format for the old Apple TV which meant hacking or iTunes only for the most part.

Flash was no good so now we have iPhones and iPads that can't display websites until they write Apple compatible versions.

Now we have this Bing, or Ping or Pong whatever and it will be useless until the world flips over to it.

No doubt about it. Apple has set us down a path that will make the monopoly of Microsoft look like a drop in the bucket. Steve Jobs will stop short of nothing but world domination. And he intends to do this with his niche market.

[QUOTE=AppleInsider;1706799] Despite the supposed fallout with Facebook, Jobs is reportedly very excited about Ping, and said he believes it could become the most significant product announced during Wednesday's keynote. /QUOTE]

As someone who works with 3 arts groups that sell their music on iTunes, I'm very interested in how Ping works. Apparently a lot of other classical musicians are as well - a lot of my twitter contacts are asking the same question: How do we create an artist's profile on Ping?

Most of us small ensembles have to use an aggregator service to get onto iTunes. If Ping doesn't allow us to create our profiles then this won't be useful to us at all. So far there it's an unanswered question.

As someone who works with 3 arts groups that sell their music on iTunes, I'm very interested in how Ping works. Apparently a lot of other classical musicians are as well - a lot of my twitter contacts are asking the same question: How do we create an artist's profile on Ping?

Most of us small ensembles have to use an aggregator service to get onto iTunes. If Ping doesn't allow us to create our profiles then this won't be useful to us at all. So far there it's an unanswered question.

Bruce

Any musician who doesn't immediately set up a strong Ping presence is a fool.

So Steve Jobs steers facebook now? Wow, this guy has a lot of power. Or does he?

Typical Apple lately. Instead of using the Skype or AIM to get facetime going, we have to use Apple's proprietary format which works on nothing but other iPhone 4's on Wi Fi so it's useless right now.

We had to use Quicktime format for the old Apple TV which meant hacking or iTunes only for the most part.

Flash was no good so now we have iPhones and iPads that can't display websites until they write Apple compatible versions.

Now we have this Bing, or Ping or Pong whatever and it will be useless until the world flips over to it.

No doubt about it. Apple has set us down a path that will make the monopoly of Microsoft look like a drop in the bucket. Steve Jobs will stop short of nothing but world domination. And he intends to do this with his niche market.

Sorry. Steve, you have lost your mind.

I'm going to call troll on this one, but just in case, your post is just a big vat of wrong.

Steve Jobs is obviously not steering Facebook. Apple wanted to work together, Facebook would only do it under certain conditions that Apple wouldn't agree to, likely involving privacy (or lack thereof).

Skype and AIM are both closed and proprietary. Lacking an open standard to use, Apple created their own, and it's only a matter of time before others catch on. The Wi-Fi restriction was put in place by carriers, not Apple.

Old TV, new TV, all iPods and iOS devices use H.264 primarily, which is not a QuickTime-only format. Far from it, it's the most widely-used format for legitimate media. The formats you seem to be implying you want are what 100% of pirated media comes in.

You have Flash and "Apple compatible" the wrong way around. What's Apple-compatible is everyone-compatible, what's Flash-compatible will only ever work with systems that have the latest version of Flash.

So Steve Jobs steers facebook now? Wow, this guy has a lot of power. Or does he?

Typical Apple lately. Instead of using the Skype or AIM to get facetime going, we have to use Apple's proprietary format which works on nothing but other iPhone 4's on Wi Fi so it's useless right now.

We had to use Quicktime format for the old Apple TV which meant hacking or iTunes only for the most part.

Flash was no good so now we have iPhones and iPads that can't display websites until they write Apple compatible versions.

Now we have this Bing, or Ping or Pong whatever and it will be useless until the world flips over to it.

No doubt about it. Apple has set us down a path that will make the monopoly of Microsoft look like a drop in the bucket. Steve Jobs will stop short of nothing but world domination. And he intends to do this with his niche market.

Sorry. Steve, you have lost your mind.

You're absolutely right, and their financial performance has been shit too.

Typical Apple lately. Instead of using the Skype or AIM to get facetime going, we have to use Apple's proprietary format which works on nothing but other iPhone 4's on Wi Fi so it's useless right now.

Skype isn't open, Apple would have had to license it, as would everyone else who wanted to interoperate. AIM, MSN video chat and others aren't open either.

Facetime is MPEG-4 clips wired together. The protocol streams clip after consecutive clip, choosing a higher or lower bandwidth version of the next clip based on latency. That's why people with VLC or other MPEG-4 video viewers were able to see short segments of the live video stream. It won't be long before you see support for the full protocol in video players.

Feel free to give Apple crap for things they deserve crap for. This isn't one of them.

It's so limiting it's practically insulting. The gender thing is *defintitely* insulting. There are a surprising number of folks who aren't either "male" or "female" for those who don't know. Besides that, there are many many more that don't particularly want to give out that information regardless. On top of all the silly user restrictions there is the fact that you *must* use name on the credit card of the account for your user name.

Why would anyone use a social network that doesn't give you any freedom to be who you are?

Why would anyone who's been on the internet for a while as <name> want to suddenly appear as the name on their credit card?

So Steve Jobs steers facebook now? Wow, this guy has a lot of power. Or does he?

Typical Apple lately. Instead of using the Skype or AIM to get facetime going, we have to use Apple's proprietary format which works on nothing but other iPhone 4's on Wi Fi so it's useless right now.

We had to use Quicktime format for the old Apple TV which meant hacking or iTunes only for the most part.

Flash was no good so now we have iPhones and iPads that can't display websites until they write Apple compatible versions.

Now we have this Bing, or Ping or Pong whatever and it will be useless until the world flips over to it.

No doubt about it. Apple has set us down a path that will make the monopoly of Microsoft look like a drop in the bucket. Steve Jobs will stop short of nothing but world domination. And he intends to do this with his niche market.

Sorry. Steve, you have lost your mind.

You complain that apple is using proprtietary video streaming technology and then suggest that something as closed as skype or aim should be used as a basis for this? Maybe you should go the whole hog and say it should work with the ever open, every apple friendly MSN?

Flash and web sites - why will you not stop banging on about this?! - It's not about websites being made "apple compatible" it's about web sites being professionally, accessibly coded with alternative content delivery whatever the platform. It's the way modern, professional sites should be developed.

The old apple TV played mp3, avi, m4p, mov and streamed content. it did it;s job just great and sold over 6 million units. If you didn't like yours, or it wasn't fit for purpose, you should have returned it. Oh, wait - you probably never owned one?

Ping does what it says it will do, today, 24 hours after it was launched. I'm following a few acts, already linked up with a few friends. It's free, it's easy to use and it's a bit of fun.

What on EARTH do you have to complain about. Don't like it - use another service, buy another company's products.

It's so limiting it's practically insulting. The gender thing is *defintitely* insulting. There are a surprising number of folks who aren't either "male" or "female" for those who don't know. Besides that, there are many many more that don't particularly want to give out that information regardless. On top of all the silly user restrictions there is the fact that you *must* use name on the credit card of the account for your user name.

Why would anyone use a social network that doesn't give you any freedom to be who you are? Why would anyone who's been on the internet for a while as <name> want to suddenly appear as the name on their credit card?

FAIL.

You've obviously not signed up then. I'm using it just fine. I'm using a nickname. The billing details on my card have remained unchanged. It works, it's fun and only people I want to follow me can follow me.

You haven't used it, you've read a web article (a very poorly written one at that, with incorrect information) and judged it? More fool you.

BTW - your comment about the gender thing and people who see themselves as neither, making this 'insulting' is utter bullsh*t. I mean, c'mon - seriously?!

So Steve Jobs steers facebook now? Wow, this guy has a lot of power. Or does he?

Typical Apple lately. Instead of using the Skype or AIM to get facetime going, we have to use Apple's proprietary format which works on nothing but other iPhone 4's on Wi Fi so it's useless right now.

We had to use Quicktime format for the old Apple TV which meant hacking or iTunes only for the most part.

Flash was no good so now we have iPhones and iPads that can't display websites until they write Apple compatible versions.

Now we have this Bing, or Ping or Pong whatever and it will be useless until the world flips over to it.

No doubt about it. Apple has set us down a path that will make the monopoly of Microsoft look like a drop in the bucket. Steve Jobs will stop short of nothing but world domination. And he intends to do this with his niche market.

I don't trust or use Facebook so this is sort of a non issue for me. However, I can say that from the outside looking in, I don't think Facebook is any better or worse at privacy an Google. My guess is that Facebook and their CEO think they can do whatever they want and people will still love them for it--that strategy isn't working out too well for Google, and clearly even worse for facebook. I read last week that their CEO is p/o because his privacy is being invaded but has no problem exposing all facebook users information.

I'm not saying apple is the gold standard but I surely trust Jobs and Co.'s judgement far more than that of facebook, google, et al. \

I'm interested to see how Ping works, though I do wish it was tied to Facebook somehow.

I value the musical tastes of at least some of my friends, and back when I lived in the UK exchanging news of new artists we'd discovered happened all the time, mostly just by thumbing through each others iPods whilst in the pub.

Now I live in the US, whilst the same information could have been exchanged via e-mail or over the phone, it doesn't. I'm not sure why, but I guess it's just not as spontanious.

The reason I'd like a link to Facebook is that most of my circle of friends use that to stay in contact, and I'm not sure how many people will setup another social networking account.

I'm going to call troll on this one, but just in case, your post is just a big vat of wrong.

Steve Jobs is obviously not steering Facebook. Apple wanted to work together, Facebook would only do it under certain conditions that Apple wouldn't agree to, likely involving privacy (or lack thereof).

Skype and AIM are both closed and proprietary. Lacking an open standard to use, Apple created their own, and it's only a matter of time before others catch on. The Wi-Fi restriction was put in place by carriers, not Apple.

Old TV, new TV, all iPods and iOS devices use H.264 primarily, which is not a QuickTime-only format. Far from it, it's the most widely-used format for legitimate media. The formats you seem to be implying you want are what 100% of pirated media comes in.

You have Flash and "Apple compatible" the wrong way around. What's Apple-compatible is everyone-compatible, what's Flash-compatible will only ever work with systems that have the latest version of Flash.

I am only hoping that privacy was the main issue. I deleted my facebook account about a year ago, when I started getting friend suggestions from facebook, that were in my IM lists. I have absolutely no use for the social sites. Hopefully Ping is much more private. I do see it as a way to follow musicians I am most interested in, and sure hope its never integrated with Facebook, and if so, they are not privy to Ping's user info.

It seems to me that as soon as anything becomes popular and established it's open season to destroy it.

Facebook is great, it's revolutionised online networking - in a way that myspace never managed to do. You put personal information on line and then don't want it to be in the public domain? You can't have it both ways. It's about self censorship, a little common sense and taking thirty seconds out to move some tick boxes around on your privacy settings.

Apple got big and successful, now they're criticised at every turn?

Utterly ridiculous.

People complain at record companies for turning a profit, book publishers for wanting to earn money for their content, apple for wanting to boost their revenue stream.

Does everyone here want to work for free and give their services and time for nothing?

There is some very odd politics and even weirder world outlooks around at the moment.

"Pay me more so I can buy nice things - but I'm not willing to pay a price other than what I consider acceptable or I'll steal what I want."

Apple are not "evil"
Facebook is not "evil"

No one forces any of you to use either of the company's products or services - if you have an issue with the way they choose to make their income, then walk away.

It seems to me that as soon as anything becomes popular and established it's open season to destroy it.

I think you've hit the nail on the head - people like to see the big kid get taken down a thing or two. Sadly it's the nature of the beast.

However, I do think Facebook have not helped themselves by having a hopelessly over complex privacy system, which you can't help but feel has been designed to confuse people in a way that will allow Facebook access to more of your data to allow them to make more money.

I'm not saying Facebook don't have the right to make a lot of money, it's just that some of the things they have done have felt a little underhand.

Ok so companies now want to copyright color schemes? lol The new color in a Crayola box will be "Facebook Blue". :P

In fact, many colours are already held under copyright as part of trademarks, There are two pantone colours - one orange, one green that you cannot use here in the UK - one is owned by Sainsburys, the other by Marks & Spencer and the colours can only be used within certain limitations in marketing and communication design...

Edit

In fact...

BP oil company: Pantone: 348C

Quote:

BP registered a trademark consisting of the colour green as part of its identity. The colour covers a significant proportion of its service station, and the company used its intellectual property rights to prevent a rival petrol retailer using the colour green, claiming that it caused confusion. The court ruled in favour of BP and confirmed that it is possible to register colours as trademarks.

I'm interested to see how Ping works, though I do wish it was tied to Facebook somehow.

I value the musical tastes of at least some of my friends, and back when I lived in the UK exchanging news of new artists we'd discovered happened all the time, mostly just by thumbing through each others iPods whilst in the pub.

Now I live in the US, whilst the same information could have been exchanged via e-mail or over the phone, it doesn't. I'm not sure why, but I guess it's just not as spontanious.

The reason I'd like a link to Facebook is that most of my circle of friends use that to stay in contact, and I'm not sure how many people will setup another social networking account.

it's a twitter like feed with links to buy something in every other post. Linkin Park posted they listened to some charlie brown x-mas album and there was an itunes link to buy the album in the post

it's not a social network, its advertising. all the "posts" are probably coming from india or some other place that livenation contracted it out to. just like a lot of celebrity twitter posts are done by their publicity firms and not the actual person.

these people including the artists are running a business. you are a source of revenue. ping is the marketing platform

I think you've hit the nail on the head - people like to see the big kid get taken down a thing or two. Sadly it's the nature of the beast.

However, I do think Facebook have not helped themselves by having a hopelessly over complex privacy system, which you can't help but feel has been designed to confuse people in a way that will allow Facebook access to more of your data to allow them to make more money.

I'm not saying Facebook don't have the right to make a lot of money, it's just that some of the things they have done have felt a little underhand.

But it's overly complex because of media hype surrounding the previous use of data.

The options provided, are the options asked for.

I reiterate that anyone putting pictures of their drunken nights out online needs to accept that the moment this is done, there's no taking it back - you've entered the public domain - facebook isn't about privacy, it's about sharing. So share if you want to, but take responsibility for your own actions!

We have colleges at work who sit side by side, say nowt all day to each other and then go whingeing on facebook about how they hate their jobs and boss and then wonder why they're hauled over the coals the next day.

Ping is a music network plain and simple. I can see quite a few new musicians making a dollar or two by getting a following. If you love music Ping is great. If you just want to socialise and blow off steam go down the pub, far less dangerous for your career.

Hmmm...that little rant gave me an idea for a new social network. I'm calling it "Go Down The Pub With You Mates Dot Com"

A reputation is not built upon the restful domain of one's comfort zone; it is made out of stalwart exposition of your core beliefs, for all challenges to disprove them as irrelevant hubris.- Berp...

You've obviously not signed up then. I'm using it just fine. I'm using a nickname. The billing details on my card have remained unchanged. It works, it's fun and only people I want to follow me can follow me.

All I can say is that everyone who has signed up so far and posted about it on the web disagrees with you. You must use the name on the credit card associated with the account.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nkhm

... BTW - your comment about the gender thing and people who see themselves as neither, making this 'insulting' is utter bullsh*t. I mean, c'mon - seriously?!

So I say that something is insulting and give some reasons, and you disagree not by bringing up any alternative argument, but by just insulting me (twice!) in one paragraph? WTF? I get that you are rude, and I get that you don't like me, but what I actually want from a reply is reasoned argument or input, not random wild insults that just feed your ego.

What's hard to understand? People like privacy. Telling the whole world what your gender is, is something that is a non-starter to a lot of people. Why should anyone have to do that?

Talk to some of the women in your life (if any of them can stand you), and ask them how much they want to be on the Internet with their gender showing. You might get a different answer.

Why would any social network service start up without having different levels of privacy? Without giving some kind of choice to the participants as to how much information they want to share? This is all standard stuff.

But it's overly complex because of media hype surrounding the previous use of data.

The options provided, are the options asked for.

I reiterate that anyone putting pictures of their drunken nights out online needs to accept that the moment this is done, there's no taking it back - you've entered the public domain - facebook isn't about privacy, it's about sharing. So share if you want to, but take responsibility for your own actions!

I agree with what you say, and personally I had no problems understanding it, but that doesn't escape the fact that the great unwashed are, for the most part, stupid.......!!!!!

All I can say is that everyone who has signed up so far and posted about it on the web disagrees with you. You must use the name on the credit card associated with the account.

So I say that something is insulting and give some reasons, and you disagree not by bringing up any alternative argument, but by just insulting me (twice!) in one paragraph? WTF? I get that you are rude, and I get that you don't like me, but what I actually want from a reply is reasoned argument or input, not random wild insults that just feed your ego.

What's hard to understand? People like privacy. Telling the whole world what your gender is, is something that is a non-starter to a lot of people. Why should anyone have to do that?

Talk to some of the women in your life (if any of them can stand you), and ask them how much they want to be on the Internet with their gender showing. You might get a different answer.

Why would any social network service start up without having different levels of privacy? Without giving some kind of choice to the participants as to how much information they want to share? This is all standard stuff.

You judge and make narrative on a process you haven't done yourself. Having to select your gender is not offensive. at all. at any level. I mean, seriously - it's a music networking service. I don't care about what some people have posted on line about their experience, I can only speak for my own. What personal experience in this matter do you speak from?

Steve Jobs is obviously not steering Facebook. Apple wanted to work together, Facebook would only do it under certain conditions that Apple wouldn't agree to, likely involving privacy (or lack thereof).

Sounds like the same excuse Apple has an exclusive partnership with ATT. Verizon would only "do it under certain conditions."

What conditions? Privacy? Facebook has no provisions for privacy?? What other conditions make it sooo bad for Apple? No kickback for Mr. Jobs? Like he got from ATT? Hmmm.